Environmental Aspects of Dredging: What About Air Quality?

Dredging has historically been important for keeping the nation's waterways navigable, mining, and more recently for the removal of contaminants and restoring natural habitat. The placement of dredged material, re-suspension of sediments, and contaminated dredged material could all result in adverse environmental impacts. These impacts have all been, and are being, studied extensively. What has not been investigated, however, are the air emissions resulting from dredging operations. The incorporation of air emissions into management decisions such as the selection of dredging technology is needed and would allow decisions based on environmental impacts and not solely on cost. This analysis lends itself to a limited life cycle and ecoefficiency analysis.